


When Compared To Love, Death Is Often Kinder

by pardon_my_french



Category: The Hot Daga (Web Series)
Genre: (for now) - Freeform, Aches and pains, Alexithymia, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, Light Angst, M/M, Not Beta Read, One-Sided Attraction, Possibly Unrequited Love, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Undiagnosed Autism, Vague Descriptions of a Panic Attack, implied autism, it's war times, this is very much a vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23252608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pardon_my_french/pseuds/pardon_my_french
Summary: Mike has had a lot on his mind, and for the first time in a while, he can't sleep.
Relationships: Dr. Goondis/Mike Soup
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	When Compared To Love, Death Is Often Kinder

**Author's Note:**

> This is a vent fic, I needed to get stuff off my chest about my own feelings and possible diagnoses. We.... vibing.

There’s a thin line between love and death. Though that’s more just the concepts. You cannot measure the weight of love, you can’t easily measure the weight of death (though that was becoming more of a skill as time went on). And time too… that was a tricky one, Mike could call it fickle if it weren’t for the fact it was just so  _ pressing _ . Every waking moment, he could feel seconds passing by. He’d always been good at guessing the time. Love though… that was familiar and foreign all at once. 

And he wasn’t dumb either, he knew, deep down, he needed it. Everyone needed some semblance of love in messed up lives, war-torn and bleeding lives, but he just didn’t seek it out. He hadn’t all his life, so there was no reason to want it now. Now that he was twenty-six and sure to die soon, maybe even tomorrow night. 

If you wanted, he could name off all six different kinds of romantic love, Eros to Agape (A-GOP-aye, right?). All five love languages. He knew it. He knew terms, he knew numbers, he knew theories. He wasn’t good with actual emotions, because who needed to be good with actual emotions when there was hardly ever a chance to express them? When you could hardly ever differentiate them and figure out which was which? He could let actual feelings claw and scratch away at the inner walls of his chest, use his ribcage like iron bars. It was easier. It wasn’t messy. It wasn’t hard.

He’d loved his parents as a kid, even if they didn’t always deserve it. He loved his starship, in a way, didn’t want to see her ruined. He had friends, past boyfriends, fleeting crushes, but he never wanted anything back. When he got loved back he fucked it up. He said something or did something he didn’t know that was necessarily wrong or weird, or he went on to just have feelings not be there anymore. And that was always messy.

Mike started to tug at the zippers on his uniform, careful to be quiet. Too many people around to be loud as he wanted. 

He wasn’t a monster. He felt things. He could figure emotions out with time and effort, but there usually wasn’t time or he was too tired to put in the actual effort. A lingering feeling of exhaustion that came from who knows where and hadn’t left in a decade. He wasn’t a monster, he was just tired. He was always tired, and he couldn’t figure out his emotions, and that was… fine. It was fine on a surface level.

The longer he was left to his own thoughts in this quiet room, lying on a cot, the more he started to notice things he hadn’t gotten to before. Normally he would just pass out, but for some reason, he couldn’t. 

He was  _ fine.  _ He would be fine. All he needed was a distraction, something to do, something to ground himself with.

Mike put a foot down on the floor, and almost immediately, his leg started to jiggle.

When was the last time he had slept actually lying down? Or without someone packed against his sides? He felt oddly cold, he hadn’t even taken anything off. 

And it felt weird, smelled weird. There wasn’t enough… person filling his senses, no steady heartbeats, no breath tickling his neck, no borderline uncomfortable warmth either. There was just nothing where there once was what he thought was too much. There was no reason, no reason at all, for that to make his collar feel tight, for that lump in his throat to be there. There was just not enough. Not enough to feel, to have to comprehend, to focus on, get lost in focusing on, to lull him into some kind of sleep. A nap at least. 

His whole body ached. All of it, even inside. 

He couldn’t cry. Not right now. Not in a room filled with people (just not enough people), with no one he knew (there was probably someone he knew), and no one he trusted, not completely. He would get yelled at or he would get the cold shoulder or he would be treated as if he was younger than he was and he just-- 

He couldn’t deal with that. He couldn’t. 

He was capable. He’d been an adult for eight years at this point, and he thought he’d stopped  _ doing _ this; breaking down like this. 

And he knew how to love, he could it was just hard. It terrified him but he could--he did--and it wasn’t fair to himself to push it down like he did everything else because that had taken months. It had taken him months to figure out he loved, and now here he was, crying about it.

He couldn’t quite remember the last time he hadn’t felt at least some form or broken. He couldn’t remember having fallen in love, actual love, deep and unconditional love, for someone. Nevermind someone who he worked with, someone who he was friends with, someone who he’d jokingly flirted with, who pretended they were boyfriends (as a joke, it was always as a joke) whenever they had a day off and they could go out with other friends and relax for a bit. 

And it had taken months to figure out why he felt the way he did, dizzy, happy, aching in a new way that he hadn’t felt before. Never that intense. 

And he felt so dumb for not being able to figure it out sooner.

And he couldn’t  _ tell  _ him. Telling him would result in a friendly smile and more jokes or a sad one and a “Sorry, I don’t feel that way about you,” or just total disgust. Disgust in the gay kid who fell in love with a straight guy because of  _ course  _ he did, or worse he’d be played off as predatory.

He was not going to do that to himself again. Not now, not ever. Feelings always came again, and even if they didn’t he was perfectly fine on his own. When was he not? He had to be.

And the more Mike thought about him, the good outcomes, the more he ached inside, and that probably wasn’t a good thing. His head filled with images of soft brown eyes, perfect smiles, that stupid beaky nose, a sleeping face that looked so much younger then. The sounds of soft laughter, a sweet little song, gentle snores. 

He was perfect and it wasn’t fair. He was perfect because of all the little things, the little things he probably completely made up, imagined, daydreams he’d lost himself in. He didn’t like it, he didn’t want it. It was usually painful, filled to the brim with disappointment and feelings that made him breathe funny, and not in a fun way.

And that’s when he really started to cry. Quietly, muffled with the sleeve of his jacket. Staring up at a blank ceiling with nothing to offer, no distractions, nothing to help him calm down, feel better. Not even slightly. 

He felt like a child. Like a child because he didn’t know what he was feeling, a child because this was exactly the way a child would react, a child because children fell in love with their best friends and cried about it. Not adults. Not adults, no matter how hard it was for them to function in day-to-day life, because adults dealt with their problems. They didn’t cry about them.

For the first time in a very long time, Mike didn’t know what the time was. To be honest? He was far, far from caring at this point. 

He thought he was used to this, that he could do this, that everything would be alright for him for once. That, at least, no one would get attached to him, no one would get close to him, that  _ he  _ wouldn’t get close to  _ them.  _

He was tired of being proven wrong, by himself no less. Every breath he took right now felt like his body was on fire, like his head had been dunked in cold water, like his lungs were trapped in a cage and there was nothing that could get them out.

He knew it would stop eventually, that’s all he had to remember. It would stop eventually. And he just needed to make it to that point. Either he would pass out or he would calm down and pass out.

He couldn’t close his eyes, because closing his eyes meant more pictures of the very man who was making him cry. Not on purpose, never on purpose. He was far too sweet for that, and if anything that made it worse;

He didn’t know if it would go well if it ever came out. His big secret, that could possibly even ruin their friendship. A relationship was fine if it was a joke. That was always it. Because then it was platonic and it was just two buddies messing around. If it was real, if someone started to feel real things for the other and someone found out? He might lose his friends (barely friends) and… him. 

He had to be an idiot, love him for more than what other people would ever consider acceptable. And now he just had to wait it out. 

Mike felt like he was dying, the added cloth in front of his mouth probably didn’t help, but he was going to be too loud, far too loud, to take it off. Wait it out. 

Count the minutes, the seconds, until everything was over and he could breathe properly again. If he could count, he wasn’t dead. If he knew how long things were taking, he would be fine. Totally and completely fine. 

Some part of him hated the other, the other that was fascinated by other people. By pretty boys with soft hair and softer smiles. And he knew that humans couldn’t function well when they were starved for touch. Every time that perfect man slung an arm around his shoulders, all he could do was lean into his side for a second, let the initial discomfort of it pass, because when he could, when everything stayed, he felt better.

He just felt stupid. Stupid and dumb. He didn’t even know  _ how  _ he got a best friend, it had just happened one day. Best friends and then sleeping squished next to each other on the floor. Mornings where he would wake up with his face tucked to a chest, a hand on his back, keeping him close. And he’d felt so much better then, so much better on those mornings even though his joints were screaming from being on the ground so long.

Mike sat up after a while, after he could breathe enough to get some actual air into his head. His brain felt swollen, he was dehydrated. Water would help, if he could actually stand up to get it.

He was still shaking when he finally stopped crying, he’d probably shake for days. Wiping at his eyes, not caring if he scratched his face with the roughness of his sleeve. He was so tired, his arms felt like jelly, but he couldn’t sleep yet. Not yet. 

It was probably weird to go around a room and look at everyone who was sleeping there, it was probably weird that he even cared who was sleeping there. But he needed… to find Ernie. He needed the comfort that came from him being near. And he could sit next to him and sleep there. It was fine. They were going to catch an early morning, and he was going to be up first anyway. He always was.

It was all those unofficial routines they had. Those little touches that meant nothing to Ernie but made him happy for hours after, despite their circumstances. It was so much easier than paying attention to what was happening around them.

And there he was, at the far end of the little room, sleeping on his back with an arm over his eyes. He was breathing, and that was… comforting. It helped more than it should’ve. A reassurance of someone familiar and safe being near.

After a minute or two, Ernie shifted, arm falling away from his eyes to right in front of them, trying to see what was going on in the dark. 

“You’re awake,” he mumbled, rubbing his face and sitting up, “what time is it?”

Mike checked his watch, straining to see the hands in the darkness, “A little past one in the morning.” 


End file.
